Remaking Film Comedy With a Straight Face

Tuesday

Feb 25, 2014 at 9:02 AM

By Jason Zinoman THE NEW YORK TIMES

Harold Ramis, who died Monday at 69, made everyone around him look better. A startlingly creative distributor of laughs, he was a master orchestrator who knew how to create conditions for funny people to excel.He was an endearing, loping presence on screen and a humble one in interviews, and he often played the straight man in a room full of show-offs. Many movie fans would barely recognize him, but make no mistake: As much as anyone, Ramis invented modern film comedy.

After his early years working with the improv troupe Second City and on “The National Lampoon Radio Hour,” Ramis helped write the paradigm-shifting, 1978 blockbuster “Animal House.” What followed was a string of deliriously funny Bill Murray movies (including “Meatballs,” “Caddyshack,” “Stripes” and “Ghostbusters”) that have become touchstones in comedy today. While Murray understandably is seen as a kind of auteur of these comedies, it takes nothing away from him to say that Ramis built their foundation.

It’s no accident that John Belushi and Murray, the greatest comedians to emerge from “Saturday Night Live,” did their funniest films with Ramis — although in Belushi’s case, John Landis’ “The Blues Brothers” is in the running.

These movies ushered in a loose, sly, smirking, improvisational style to mainstream Hollywood. The funniest parts have the casual, mischievous quality of kids whispering together in detention. Ramis favored unobtrusive camerawork and a patient focus on ensemble performances. As a writer for the essential “SCTV” sketch show, he honed his sense of when to lay back and when to tie up a scene.

At the same time, these wandering scenes were built on sturdy structures that kept his movies from being a series of sketches. And he had the perfect anchor for this offhand comedic style in Murray. You can see Ramis’ influence clearly in recent features by Adam McKay (“Anchorman”) and Judd Apatow, who in a tip of the cap, cast Ramis as Seth Rogen’s father in “Knocked Up” (2007).

Ramis’ films also broke ground in updating and packaging the tradition of sick humor for a mainstream Hollywood audience. There was an adolescent boy’s sensibility about sex and a gleefully transgressive attitude toward taboos. It was crass material for the time, but delivered in a context of counterculture rebellion. In these movies, Ramis celebrated the troublemakers, the delinquents and the weirdos who triumphed over the squares, the authority figures, the military.

Of course, the success of a movie like “Animal House” led to even more tasteless teen movies of narrower focus like “Porky’s,” which spawned an entire genre.

But Ramis’ collaboration with Murray continued to mature, eventually culminating in the sublime “Groundhog Day,” which somehow manages to balance a high-concept philosophical conceit and a heartfelt romance inside a universally appealing mainstream comedy. It’s too brilliant to be copied.

Even after his artistic relationship with Murray broke apart, Ramis continued to have success, directing a hit in 1999 with “Analyze This,” a mob spoof in which he delicately balanced the different talents of Billy Crystal and Robert DeNiro. He also returned to television, directing episodes of “The Office.”

Throughout his career, Ramis made irreverent comedies that were ruthless about getting laughs, yet had a soft-spoken sweetness. Viewers always got the sense that the films’ satirical heart was in the right place. One lesson of his career is that you can get away with a lot if you mix it with a little innocence.

As an actor, he knew the value of a light but firm touch. Consider the scene in “Stripes” (which he helped write and starred in) where he and Bill Murray apply to join the army. The recruiter asks them: “Now, are either of you homosexuals?” There’s a pause as the comedy partners glance at each other, measuring up the situation. Ramis stays quiet as Murray goes first: “You mean, like, flaming or —?”

After another response from the military man and a beat, Ramis finishes the exchange with a confident smirk: “No, we’re not homosexuals,” he says flatly, “but we’re willing to learn.”